BUSH'S RANTS ABOUT WINNING TAKE ME BACK DECADES

President Bush's continued rants that we cannot pull out of Iraq soon reminds me so much of a similar voice from a different era...and a different war.

In around 1967-69 I was but a youngster growing up in rural south Mississippi. We lived with my paternal grandmother then, a wonderful woman who worked as a nurses' aide at one of the local hospitals. She enjoyed listening to country music, and regularly tuned into to one of the area's morning radio shows.

Then at 9:00 weekdays, the station would air the programme of what would today be known as an evangalical preacher (demoninationally a Presbyterian) based in Collingswood, New Jersey, Dr. Carl McIntyre. But many days his show would not focus on saving souls as much as winning the war in Vietnam.

He was Pat Robertson well before "The 700 Club" was but a thought. McIntyre would maybe spend five minutes on preaching from the Bible. The remainder of the time he would rant about who he described as Communists and their sympathisers protesting our Vietnam policy and desegregation. I believe he actually participated and/or helped organize some pro-war rallies in Washington.

He also founded the American and International Council of Churches to protest what he considered liberalism in the National and World Councils of Churches.

Many religious conservatives consider McIntyre a father of the politically active evangalical movement.

That's who Bush's ranting sounds like to me.